http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/
Post your Type-Moon Fanfics here!enMon, 21 Jan 2019 21:24:34 GMTvBulletin60http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/images/misc/rss.pnghttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/
Fanfiction Recshttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8202-Fanfiction-Recs?goto=newpost
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 01:50:32 GMTI already asked Seika's permission to do so, but I keep going back and forth about whether or not I should bother. Would any of you actually utilize it if I cleaned up and revamped this: http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...-Updates-never ?

That's the poll question.

I also wondered if any of you would be remotely interested in some kind of ongoing challenge to get you motivated to write. I hate that fanfic is so slow and that we don't engage each other well anymore. Bring back Old Internet etiquette. That part anyway.

Poll is set to run for 30 days, so actually use your words / mouse.
]]>FanficsPrix with a Silent Xhttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8202-Fanfiction-Recshttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8201-A-Fairy-Tale-of-Love-and-Death-%28-Fate-Stay-Night-one-shot%29?goto=newpost
Mon, 14 Jan 2019 03:39:51 GMT

This was originally an entry in Kirby's 2017 Tanabata Exchange contest, but it's been heavily-rewritten from its unfinished first version.
Many, many thanks to Seika, TwilightsCall and Prix of Heroes (with a Silent X) for all their help!

Once upon a time, long before Cathbad’s prophecies and the bloodshed and sorrows of the kingdom of Ulster, there was a warrior-witch who knew all the arts of war and all the crafts of magic between Heaven and Hell. With the two spears she always carried, she could fell enemies with the speed of lightning and the force of thunder; with her magic words, she could tame all the spirits of the air, land, and sea. Her name was Scáthach, and it’s said she was born and bred by the Morrígan herself for no other purpose than to fight.

One should never attract the blessings of the raven-winged phantom queen: the warrior-witch had fought in as many battles as there were stars in the sky and won as many victories as there were drops in the ocean, and now she could no longer find any challenge in the realms of monsters and men. It wasn’t victory she craved, nor the blood or tears of her enemies, but the cold fire which raged in her heart and bones when gambling her life on the storm of spears and swords; denied that, her soul was rotting as if trapped in chains. Starving to the point of madness for the warrior’s thrill, she set out through the land of Eire preying on any who dared call themselves warriors – but where others fought in duels, she duelled armies. So many were the souls she sent to the land under the waves that their voices broke through the mist between worlds in a lament even the gods could not ignore:

“Cursed be Scáthach for as long as the House of Dónn stands! Will she be wife and husband to our spouses, mother and father to our children? Woe to the land of Eire, whose emerald fields are reddened with our blood!”

Maybe stories of their plight reached distant lands, ones even the seafaring Milesians had never reached, or maybe the gods did heed their suffering; even the wisest don’t know. What is known is that soon after, a bronze-skinned stranger, bigger in build than most men, arrived on Eire’s shores. This bearded, greying wanderer immediately set out after the warrior whose suffering threatened to drown the land in death. Though he dressed in simple traveller’s clothes and carried nothing more than a walking staff, the keen-eyed noticed his manner and thought to themselves: “There is strength in this man, for he has iron in his back and iron in his soul.”

Maybe he was led to Scáthach by the wolves and ravens she fed so well, or maybe he could sense the smell of death around her, but after walking for three days and nights with neither food nor rest, the wanderer did reach her. They met by the side of one of Eire’s many lakes as she was breaking camp, with only the wind and the trees and the rocks to witness it, as none of the beasts of the air or the wild dared remain around them.

It’s said that the stranger could have struck her at once and she would never have known of him, a gentle breeze to take her to the land under the waves; and indeed, that’s what he had thought to do. But even at a glance he was struck by how she surpassed all others in strength and elegance, for her body was hardened like stone or oak, yet the smallest of her movements seemed to blend in with the very elements around them. However, he also saw the falseness in her manner, as the easy smile on her lips never reached her deadened eyes, and for a moment the iron in his soul became dented by the tears she neither spilled nor knew.

It had been only for a moment, but in that moment the gentle killing wind became a hurricane hunting across the heavens, and Scáthach immediately turned to the silent swordsman, weapons ready. And in that grey morning colder than the barrow, when one could hear the whispers of the dead or glimpse the embers of the future if they were to strain their senses, these were the words the slayer of armies and the nameless wanderer exchanged:

“You are Scáthach, breaker of swords, killer of men” he said, his voice deep and entrancing as the sea on a moonless night.

She said she was. “And who are you who seeks me from distant lands, and what purpose do you have?”

“I have no name of my own, but you may call me Bergelmir. I am here for your head, for you are wicked and cruel. You are strong yet use your strength only to trample the weak.”

She snorted in derision, for while she did trample the weak, she did not trample the innocent, she said. “They who would take lives must themselves be ready to die; such is the only path for a warrior to walk.”

That might be so, he replied, but she couldn’t deny she stood on a level they would never reach, much like a tree could never hope to grow as tall as a mountain, and so what she engaged in wasn’t a proper meeting of warriors, but mere butchery; to which she said that was true, that she took their lives even though they were poor prey, but she cared not if that was thought dishonourable.

Bergelmir shook his head at those words. “It’s not for honour I am here, but justice. The gift of death is not yours to give, and your actions offend laws written by divine hands, for you have killed so many their blood and tears could drown out the sea.”

She agreed she had robbed many lives, and for a very selfish reason, and that was certainly a transgression. “But not against the divine. Hunger, sickness, cold; my spears have slain as many people as there are blades of corn in sunlit lands, but still that pales beside the number slain by those, the weapons of the divine! Better for the lambs to fight and die as they choose than surrender to the fangs of the wolves we call ‘gods’.”

And Bergelmir spoke once more, his eyes ablaze. “Fool! There is neither choice nor dignity in death, only in a life well lived. Shelter for the destitute, succour to the suffering, and knowledge passed on, only in those steps to the garden of salvation can mortals find true glory in the beyond. How foolish it is to worry about dying as a warrior when talking about the everlasting sleep; better to live as a slave than rule as king over the breathless dead.”

“I am a fool, yes, and twice as much a fool as the most ignorant druid or witless king, for when I finally reach the silvery plains of everlasting youth, I will stain them with the blood in which I drenched my soul. But such is the warrior’s way, and I will walk no other.”

They saw then that words were useless and nothing but the clash of weapons could bring peace between them.

They fought with great vigour and peerless skill, never once giving pause or quarter, sword and spears and spells clashing in such a way it was as if the earth and air shook with the roaring of thunder. So fierce was their battle that all the spirits and eldritch beings of the land of Eire could feel it, and their fearful shrieks brought madness and chaos to beasts and the weak-willed.

Both were beyond mortal understanding. Bergelmir was like Time, the great destroyer, to whom even the gods must bow: relentless in its hunger, unstoppable in its march. But Scáthach was the wind on the sea, the waves on the shore, the bull of seven battles; she was one with the elements and the elements sang with her every move as she danced the dance of carnage. Their weapons flashed two walls of steel, unfailingly parrying all attacks even as they sought the enemy’s flesh and blood.

And as that storm raged on, it burned away the rot in Scáthach’s heart, for it was in fighting that she found joy and meaning, and she laughed the laughter of children – innocent, heartless, cruel. Truly, she was the daughter of the queen of the crows of battle! And Bergelmir, who knew only duty and devotion, suddenly saw passion beyond any he had ever known, and for the second time in his life the iron in his soul was dented.

For days on end they fought, never once giving pause or quarter, but never once drawing blood either, until they could fight no more, their tired bodies begging for relief. They couldn’t even lift their weapons, but neither did they drop them from their hands; they simply stood before each other, entranced, their resolve unwavering even as they panted for breath, a dead calm after the storm. And then something passed between them, something wordless, intangible, but loud as thunder. They had spoken first with words, then with weapons; now, it was as if they spoke with their eyes.

So it was that in that battlefield unstained by blood a crimson flower bloomed, the clash of weapons silenced, and there was peace between them. Scáthach, born and bred for no other purpose than to fight, was as much a tool of the divine as those she despised, an existence distorted by its own purity of meaning in a world which couldn’t accept it; Bergelmir, who had iron in his back and iron in his soul, wasn’t born to his reason for being, he had tempered himself until he became the grim servant of Fate. How could they kill that which they desired – envied – the most?

Three days and nights after their meeting, Scáthach and Bergelmir parted ways. What happened after their fight is unknown. Some say each understood the other to be their equal and felt great sorrow; some say each understood the other to be their lesser and felt great despair. But others – the young, the foolish, and the mad – say neither understood the other, but still felt great love; even the wisest don’t know. Bergelmir was never seen again in the land of Eire, or so it’s believed. As for Scáthach, it’s said she stopped her murderous ways; though she never failed to meet any challenge, she never again hunted people, only the beings who lived beyond the edge of human reasoning, and in time she too came to step over that line into the realm of legends.

***

Once upon a time without beginning or end (for time holds no meaning in the world between worlds), there was a woman who lived alone in a decaying castle high above the cliffs, in the land which was only bathed by the dying light of a perpetually grey sun. Some might have called her the queen of that dismal realm, and they would not have been wrong, for she did hold dominion over it; but it would have been closer to the truth to say that she, being neither alive nor dead, belonged to it just as much as the ghostly echoes of what had been and would never be.

She often sat alone in that castle courtyard which neither sound nor warmth could reach, except for the small campfire she kept eternally burning in remembrance of the last gift she ever received. Other times, she would leave her fortress and mercilessly hunt the shades of the dead and the never-born throughout the land, her blood briefly boiling in an ever-fading delight at the battle songs they composed together. And sometimes she would stand atop the castle walls and muse on days long-gone, like the ill-considered wagers of Queen Fedelmid the Almost-Wise, or how Kings Aedan and Brennan were humiliated in feats of strength and daring. But sometimes, when the walls between worlds were so thin one could almost hear the singing of the wind or smell the passing of the seasons, she would let herself be at ease and smile fondly, for she knew their meeting drew nearer. And when they finally meet again, then she will have an answer for the question that was asked so long ago.

Content Warning: This post contains explicit descriptions of coerced sexual activity/rape, even though it is not particularly violent. Also incest.

A Touch of HeavenAn ensemble cast, alternative Sakura narrative.

Chapter Index

I. Incubus Complex

There was a time when her silence was sadness, when it was grief. Back then, she still held onto hope that perhaps one day something, someone, would save her. She gave up on her father and then her mother in quick succession, but she knew she still had an older sister, and there must have been some reason she was kept inside the Tohsaka household when Sakura was not. Her older sister must have been stronger than her, better, and so for a long time she imagined that perhaps one day her older sister would come to the door, take her by the hand, and whisk her away into the night. Only, it was not to be. Her uncle, lost and broken Kariya, had given her hope for a little while, too, but he had become a husk of a man, and he was devoured by the worms that wouldn’t, couldn’t devour her.

She had given up after that. She had learned that grief did no good and that hope was a poison that ate into her more deeply than the worms ever did. Only, a sliver of light remained in the dreary, damp old mansion. Her new big brother was smart, too. He carried himself with confidence and a knowledge of privilege that Sakura had never learned nor hoped to possess, but it made him hard to look away from. At first, he had pushed her away, hated her intrusion and her presence, but she had tried to apologize for it. She hadn’t wanted to become a part of his family, to forget her blood and her name and the softness of her mother’s voice. She hoped, dangerously, that enough submission, surrender, and closeness would one day show him that she had not meant to inconvenience him.

And it worked.

One day, Matou Shinji saw Sakura. There was a certain hooded expression to his eyes that made her feel cold to her center, but she was used to how cold it was down in the basement. This was nothing to that. She could bear the cool condescension in his gaze, because it was only fair, because she deserved it for taking his place. She could bear it because he smiled at her, too, and that wasn’t fake. From that day on, he did not always ignore her. He allowed her to help him with things. He acknowledged her as his sister to the girls who followed him around without ever quite looking at his face and the boys who excelled against him in sports. On rare occasions, they would find a spot in the Matou mansion that wasn’t quite so dreary as the others, and he would show her something.

Once, they sat in a wide, defiant beam of light that found its way through a crack in the heavy, dusty drapes. There, cross-legged on the floor, they leaned toward each other, and in the center there was a large, ancient manuscript that strained even Shinji’s older, bigger hands to hold. He had committed much of the Matou magecraft and history to memory. He spoke about it in hushed tones, like a ghost story he didn’t expect her to believe but which he took great pride in. She wondered why he shared with her something he could never do and which she knew in her deepest nerves by then, but she didn’t question it. She just listened to him speak with her and watched his sly, smooth gestures with restrained amusement that made her forget that she pitied him for a while. Even if he would never be a magus, he was smart. He would survive this place.

Another time, in the hot and sticky days of midsummer, they escaped together to the patch of grass that – despite its closeness to the centuries-old Matou workshop – sprouted some effort at color and life due to the weather. It ran along the bricked path that some might have called a driveway, though there was no car at the Matou residence to have need of it. Sakura watched as her brother – as he was her brother – set himself to the purpose of galavanting across this small swath of life, backward and forward again, with the purpose of capturing some of the luminescent insects that swarmed around and found each other in the twilight. Sakura knew, whether her big brother did or not, that their purpose in lighting up at varying intervals was not to light the interior of the jar he captured them in, even going to the trouble of preparing the jar with jabbed-in holes to allow them air as if that might have been all they needed to survive indefinitely. Sakura knew that they were signaling to each other, reaching out with carnal lust and carnal kindness. They wanted to make new life before their own brief lives faded away, never knowing that they were hopelessly outmatched by the decay that spread just beyond and beneath them.

She had watched him for a while and noted that he was smiling. She liked it when he smiled, and to him they were only fireflies. Only, she could not bear to watch them having their lives threatened, cut short, and drowned out through being sealed up inside her brother’s gentle prison. Moved by her desire to avoid being taught this particular pastime and her habit to join in the motions of play going on around her, she rose to her feet. She turned to one of the trees that grew up out of the green grass and placed her hand to its trunk. It seemed to know this place better than the grass or the fireflies. It looked as if it believed autumn had never ended.

Compassion for it welled up in her. It was another emotion that she had not quite lost touch with, though it seemed to filter through a screen. She put both hands to the trunk of the tree. She wondered if just touching it would send its soul into endless winter, but she had seen other children climbing trees in parks she had never stopped to play in.

She tried it, a rare impulse and curiosity. She did not give consideration to the why of it. She only fully recognized what she was doing when her efforts failed and she slid back down the main trunk of the tree, holding on with meer friction burns to her hands but a long scrape along her shin. She was used to pain by that point, to agony, but the surprise of it makes her cry out softly. It caught her brother’s attention. He took the time to screw the lid back onto his jar of captured, doomed bugs, but he came over to her and she felt his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. She caught her breath and looked up at him, her gaze wide but clear.

“I’m fine,” she told him, because he seemed concerned. There were dozens of little holes in her bare skin. They wept blood a little, but the blood was restrained, like tears brimming in the eyes of a person too stubborn to let them fall. She got up to prove that she was fine. She even held onto the side of his shirt somewhere about his ribs to steady herself. He showed her his firefly collection proudly, his arm slinging around her shoulders to hold her close and her attention captive. She didn’t really want to see them because despite the beauty of their constant flashing, all she could wonder was whether or not some of them might mate in their fruitless cage, keeping their bloodline going with no hope of survival. She looked up at her brother’s face instead, feeling terribly for him – that he could not see why it was sad.

He just barely noticed that she was looking at him and scowled. In a smooth movement, he pushed her away but only by a few inches, disentangling his arm from her shoulders.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he admonished her. It was something he said often. She looked down, trying not to look at him like anything. She could feel his eyes still on her. She blinked her own and stared at the damp, strangely lush grass. It needed to be cut if it didn’t die first. She scuffed a worn, pink sneaker into it. “Can you run, Sakura?” came a question she didn’t expect.

Her heart stuttered in her chest. His tone was so cool and strange that she was afraid she had made him hate her again. She lifted her eyes to see, to apologize, but the devilish smile she saw on his face was not one of true evil. It broke into a brighter grin, and he lunged for her, fingers grasping at the shirt she wore. Again, mostly out of surprise, Sakura ducked back and made her abdomen small with a deep tension of her tiny muscles.

“I said run!” he encouraged through laughter, and she did. She did with all her might, because not obeying an order was like saying she did not want to live here anymore, and she did not have anywhere else to go. She ran from him, but she could not keep it up for long. There was only so much grass, so she ran for the paving stones, but he caught her by her arm and whirled her back toward him.

“I’m sorry!” she squeaked at him as she ran into him bodily with the force of his pulling back at her.

“Don’t be,” he sneered at her. He let her go. He took a few steps backward, and she thought his posture was strange. It was as if his shoulders went further back than his sense of balance should have allowed. Then, he rounded on the ball of his foot, back into the relative softness of the grass. “You’re it!” he declared, a challenge that he dared her to defy.

She scuffed her shoes again, this time on the stones beneath them.

“Chase me!” he ordered and explained at once. Sakura frowned at the request – the command – but she did her best after a couple of seconds of tracking Shinji’s holding pattern of making an arc back and forth of equidistance from her until she caught on. She started up after him, small and breathless and determined, and he feinted in the opposite direction in response to her bodily dive toward him.

She crashed down onto her stomach and slid a bit along the grass. It didn’t hurt her except knocking the wind from her lungs. Her hands instinctively went up beside her shoulders, pushing to get up again, but she stayed low, looking guiltily toward Shinji. She hadn’t done as she was told – at least not very well.

“Come on. You haven’t lost. Yet,” Shinji explained. He watched her and she got up. Then, staying more than an arm’s length from her as they circled a bit like two predators trying to decide which was prey, he explained the concept of a “base” to her, and she nodded with understanding. Then he set out for it. The first few times, he beat her there, but sooner or later, she learned to catch him from time to time. Each time she did, he made sure to catch her more roughly than the last time he was “it,” but it was a game that brought with it such breathless exhilaration, such a rush of stimulant adrenaline, that Sakura’s breath felt almost like laughter. Almost. And some days of her childhood – not most, but some – were like that: a few drops of blood and a few fireflies.

Then one day, the drapes were slid back into place. The house was darkened, never to know sunlight again. It was as if, finally, the worms that were part of her training had taken their fill of her and moved on to her brother without his flesh bearing a mark. From the moment he knew of their existence, part of her thought that it must be happening to him, too. Only she knew better. If they touched him even once, his flesh would be no more. Something ate into his heart, though, and that something was devoured, digested, and never came through his eyes toward her again.

It happened all at once, but slowly, slowly, she began to see what it would mean. She thought she had given up dread and regret and hope long ago, but no matter how many times she told him: “I’m sorry, big brother. I’m sorry, big brother. I’m sorry, big brother,” it never made a difference. His heart was hardened to her forever, and it broke another piece of her she had hoped couldn’t break anymore. She stopped meeting his eyes again, and it was as if what they once were had never happened. He was still ‘big brother,’ to her, but he left her alone. Alone – all the time – until finally, finally there was a crack in that wall of ice he had erected between them.

It was hot, violent, and terrifying. And she only fought back once.

The first time he came into her room after leaving her alone, ignoring her, and deriding her all over again, he had reached out for her with gritted teeth and held breath. Then it was sound, breath, rage, and a tearing at her clothes and skin that she hadn’t seen coming. She didn’t know why she hadn’t. She should have.

She wondered, afterward, how long he had known how to use that to hurt her.

She wondered if he had ever thought about it before.

She had known what was possible for a long, long time, though she’d never felt anything human touching her, taking her, raping her.

The following day, she was able to take a bath alone. He did not come to see what he had already seen, and their grandfather was nowhere to be found. She wondered if he knew. She didn’t want him to know. She knew he would laugh, and she couldn’t bear the shame of that. It would be worse than what she had caused her brother to sink into in his anger and shame. She did not know how to make it better or if she ever could, but she cried alone for a little while that morning. The warmth of the water on her face was the only comfort she could expect for her tears, easing the swelling so he would not know and make it or the bruises and scratches on her body worse.

The subsequent change didn’t happen all at once. He didn’t come back the following night or even every night when he did. Life carried on as it always had, except there were no more moments in the sunlight when she returned home from school or from Emiya’s house. Shinji was rough with her, careless in a way that he had not been before, but he still claimed her as his sister in front of others. At least she still had that. As long as she did, she could probably continue to bear his claiming her in other ways. She had done her best to learn to go numb, to stop screaming or crying or even reacting because it had never done her any good.

She certainly didn’t fight him anymore, and she tried to become as inanimate as she could. She tried to imagine that she was a doll, distant and empty and rigid. Only, it never lasted. She couldn’t let it, because Shinji was – no matter what he was – not like the worms.

He was her brother. Before that, he was human. He was alive, and he was a boy who had believed in something about himself, about his worth, about his future, before it had all been stamped out. Sooner or later, she stopped simply staring up at the ceiling or down into her pillow. She saw him, because they were both terrible, both broken, and completely the same.

It didn’t take long at all for her to lose her ability to pretend not to feel it. Every single moment of training made her reaction worse. Made it easier in the worst way she could imagine. Soon, sometimes, her hand would find its way up to his arm. She gripped him there, not to push him away but to hold on, for some anchor to humanity as sensation, arousal, and disgust mingled in her body like fuel running into an engine, making her react like a machine meant only for this.

She never went to him. It was her only reliable source of dignity that remained within the walls of the Matou mansion. When she did come home after staying as late at Emiya’s as she could possibly allow each day, she moved as silently as she could through the house. If she met Shinji or her grandfather there – in the kitchen, in the hall – she would greet them, polite and soft. Sometimes, they spat derision. Sometimes, they gave her orders. Worse still, they were occasionally mindlessly civil. But they never said it. Neither of them ever gave any indication of knowing what had changed so irreparably between the two who had never been meant to be brother and sister but who had found a way through such a dark cavern together.

No, he only came to her when he felt like it, letting himself into her room. She had learned to anticipate him, in a way. She couldn’t count on a schedule, but she could feel it in the air, in the way he looked at her – even at school. She knew that look in his eyes, and she was worse for not hating it as much as she should have. She hated it, but at least it meant he wanted her there for something. At least it meant he remembered her at all. Instead, what she hated were the girls who swarmed around him, for his attention, his sweet words, and the promise of money that his great mansion held.

It made Sakura nauseated that she would think such a thing, sometimes violently enough to make her run into the bathroom. It was the only place she could look into her own eyes, knowing what only the two of them did. Even if he went on dates with a girl, two, or all of them, it was her bed he would come to. She wondered if he had ever done it with anyone else. It would make her dig her fingernails into her own skin, but she would always stop just before it broke.

⧞⧞⧞

On a cold day in early January, she returns home in the twilight and slips through the dark house as the light outside fades. The house seems empty, and the oppressive air within it seems bearable for a given evening. Sakura takes off her shoes at the door, but she quickly nudges them into a nearby closet, masking her presence as much as she can hope to. She does not announce that she is home, but she carries her bag with her up to her bedroom.

She is allowed to use it more than when she was small, sleeping rather than losing her senses in the pit underground.

She changes out of her school uniform into some clothes that are more comfortable. She wears dark cloth shorts and a t-shirt. There is no point keeping up appearances here, and at least her skin can breathe. Despite it being cold outside, her own skin runs hot most of the time. She hangs up her school uniform for the following day.

She stands on the carpeted floor and wriggles her toes. She looks around, almost anxious and very nearly feeling free. Sometimes, for a moment, when she returns from a day at school and an afternoon at Emiya’s house, she can almost imagine that she is a normal girl and that this is a normal room. She sits down on the edge of her bed and cracks open her school bag. From within it, she pulls out her homework and hears the sharp crinkle of a thick, plastic bag. Fishing back down into her satchel, she draws out a bag of crisps given to her by someone at school – probably Mitsuzuri, though she struggles to summon the memory. She holds it in her hand, feeling the tension of the air caught inside that has protected the crisps from being utterly crushed all this time. She frowns with bemusement at them. She knows that Emiya would likely disapprove of such a false, processed snack.

She gets to her feet and travels down the stairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen. When she returns, she pries open the bag of crisps, and she starts to eat them, slowly suckling all the savory salt from them before she lightly chews and swallows what remains. She does so without much thought, methodical but attentive as she concentrates, mostly, on her homework.

She is nearly finished when something disrupts the steady calm she has settled into. The bag of crisps were finished a long time ago, but she glances at them furtively the moment her brother calls her name with neither respect nor hostility, filled to the brim with something that is rather like drunkenness instead even though she knows he hasn’t had a drop to drink. He lets himself into her room, like he always does, and she is already gathering her homework and quickly organizing it into finished and into what she will need to complete when she escapes to Emiya’s house in the morning – anticipating, like always.

When she has quickly put her things back into her school bag and slid it safely between her bed and an underused chair, she finally looks up at Shinji’s face. He smiles at her, but there is little warmth and cruel amusement. Her own eyes narrow, slightly, but it is more as if she is squinting at a harsh, unnatural light than that she is glaring at him. She has lost the will to do that very often.

“Well,” he says. He leans for the bed, and she thinks that it is already too late. Instead, he snatches the finished crisp bag and makes a show of inspecting the inside of it, noting how cleanly it has been cleared out. “I’m not sure Emiya would approve,” he says – mocking her.

“Never mind it,” she says quickly. Too quickly. He crushes the bag in his hand and drops it to the floor with an unmistakable glower of his own.

Sakura doesn’t look up at him. Instead, she swallows and takes a deep breath of air. Her hands go down to the hem of her shirt. She closes her eyes and starts to pull it up over her head.

He laughs. Deep and guttural. Only, it fades into a contemplative hum. She feels him stand back further to the center of the room, away from her. She doesn’t know how she feels his presence even when he steps away, only that she does. She drops her shirt toward the foot of the bed on top of the mint green bedclothes. She looks at it, white and pink printed and still intact.

“You want me,” he says in a low, almost gentle hum. It gives her goosebumps; it turns her stomach. She glances over but not up to the level of his eyes. He is draping the top of his school uniform over the wooden chair that belongs with her rarely-used desk.

Sakura swallows again, but her throat feels dry. There is a knot in the pit of her stomach. It’s sickness, yes, but not just the kind of sickness she should be feeling. She looks to the door. It isn’t even fully closed. She can’t bring herself to care. The knot in her stomach unfurls a little to allow her to breathe. Blood rushes to the surface of her skin, making her more sensitive and receptive to touch. She hangs her head, hair falling in her face.

Shinji steps out of his pants and takes the time to fold them over with his top. He stands there in dark, tight boxer-briefs that almost resemble her own shorts. He comes closer. She braces herself, teeth touching together and jaw slacking with conscious effort. She waits for him to slap her, to hit her because she hasn’t come up with the right words to say. Instead, he grabs her by the chin and makes her look up at him. She blinks against the messy drape of her own hair tangling with her eyelashes and meets his eyes from so far below him.

“You want me,” he repeats, grinning with smug satisfaction. He glances down pointedly to her breasts cradled within her bra. He looks back at her face and one of his eyebrows goes low than the other. “But you’re not the only one,” he taunts her.

He knows what he is doing. She doesn’t know how, but he does. The worst part of it is the envy. She wants him to want her. She wants him to come to her, to use her if he must use anyone. He is her brother. And she needs him.

She can’t come up with the words for that. She reaches down and hooks her thumbs into her shorts and panties at once, making quick work of tugging them up to her knees and then down past her ankles. She throws them away, quickly. It doesn’t make a difference if she tries to hide that she is already a little wet.

She draws her knees toward her chest anyway, realizing that her bra is still on. She hugs her knees to her chest and shivers, though her body is still running too hot. She presses and rubs her lips together as she looks to Shinji, standing there in his underwear. Her eyes flit down, and she sees his erection straining against the dark fabric. The sickness in her belly stirs at the sight of it and the thoughts and the associations that chase after it. She digs her nails into her own skin.

He laughs at her as if he pities her again. She misses that laugh. Maybe that’s what’s so wrong with her.

“Do you think you could help me?” he asks. He is mocking her, but she quickly looks up at him anyway. She knows it must be a trick, but somehow, without asking for clarification, she understands. She lets go of her knees, straightens her legs, and swings them over the side of the bed. She sits there, naked except for her breasts, and straightens her posture as if she might find any sort of decency that way. She reaches out, fingertips hooking the waistband of his underwear and tugging it down his hips.

She hears him sigh when his erection springs free. She is glad it isn’t painfully big. Sometimes, she wishes it were bigger. She tugs his underwear down his thighs until, past his knees, they fall free. He steps out of them. She looks back up along his body. He is lean, lightly muscled, and she knows that he is handsome enough. She also knows that none of that matters. Her brother isn’t supposed to want this, but she knows that she is in no position to resist. She rubs her lips together again as her eyes dart back down to his erection. She wonders if he wants her to. She won’t make the first move unless he says so.

He notices the look on her face and laughs at her.

“Maybe some other time, bitch,” he says. He reaches for her throat and grasps it just beneath her chin. It doesn’t cut off her breathing, but he guides her back until she is realigning herself into the proper position on the bed. She gets wetter by the second, and it’s a good thing. This way, she won’t bleed.

When she is in position, he comes down over her. It is a practiced movement, and she watches him with relative disinterest. He lets go of her neck and it feels almost clinical. No. It would never be clinical. Instead, it feels almost normal.

She wonders what it is like for normal people who have sex with someone who isn’t their brother, someone they want, someone they love. Even someone they just met. She thinks she probably won’t ever know.

He pries her thighs apart to his liking, gripping tightly enough to leave whiter marks on her pale skin. She relaxes, leaving them where he places them. In that regard, she still does feel like a doll.

It doesn’t hurt when he presses inside her. She doesn’t think it ever would have; her body was already too broken from the start. She sighs softly, but it is neither satisfaction nor pain at first. She closes her eyes anyway.

He is altogether more entertained for a little while at least. He braces his feet against the wall that is at the foot of her built-in bed. He finds a rhythm, entirely wrapped up in himself. She feels it as the rhythm gets steadier. Harder. His pelvic bone grinds into her, over her, and even though he doesn’t care at all about whether or not he grinds against her, sometimes he does.

Sooner or later, she can’t help it. She sighs again, but this time it is with interest – even relief. Her voice catches in her throat, pressed out of her to his rhythm. She looks up and watches him. It makes it even worse. When his eyes meet hers, his hand comes down to her throat again, just to prove he can, but after a slightly uncomfortable press from his thumb, she lifts her own hips and squeezes her own muscles. She has learned how to protect herself. His eyes flutter closed and he groans – for her. He drops his hand away from her throat and it tangles in her hair instead.

She is easy. She knows she shouldn’t be. She knows that other women, other girls, have a harder time with it. She hears them talking, sometimes, in discreet tones when no one else can or ever should hear. She knows that she shouldn’t be able to come on a man’s dick without even touching her clit. She knows that she shouldn’t succumb before he does when he doesn’t even try to help her. But the moment she responds in kind, even if it is to keep breathing, it is too late. She knows what will happen. Suddenly, she is no longer a doll. It is mutual. He touches her, and she grasps back, squeezes back, writhes back. She never says an articulate word, but their moans and sighs are communication enough. They have learned each other, and without any special effort on his part, she orgasms. It drives him crazy. He fucks her harder, defiant and driven mad that she gets something he doesn’t get, until finally he spills his semen deep inside her. It is warm and stirs her again. But she doesn’t ask for a thing – not ever.

He rolls off of her. They are both slick with sweat. It even smells the same. Even though she was not born into his bloodline, every cell of her body has been changed to be more like his. And still he wants her like this. A bitter taste in the back of her throat comes when she wonders if that’s why he wants her at all.

He catches his breath raggedly at her side. For a moment, if they weren’t naked and dirty, she would think that it might be almost like what normal siblings would do. But she has never known normal. Not once, not for a second.

He stills beside her. She glances over at him with a kind of nonsensical, habitual concern. She wonders if he will look her in the eye, but more than that she wonders if he has fallen asleep. She knows that it drains men to do this, even under normal circumstances. She wonders if he will ever sleep with her. He never has. She wonders if she wants him to.

At first, his eyes are closed, but he quickly opens them. There is a glint in them that shows her that he has chased away his desire to sleep. She wonders if he can see what she wonders in her eyes. She has heard at least a myth that doing this sometimes draws people closer, but real intimacy is something that she has no knowledge of. She wouldn’t even know what it looked like.

He gets up on his elbow and looks her up and down. She is still lying on her back. She draws her hands together over her chest and twiddles her fingers together, taking interest in them instead. He snorts, not quite making it to another biting laugh.

Her eyes widen at the question and she keeps twiddling her fingers, but it is a bit rougher and a little awkward now, as if she has lost motor control of part of her body. She doesn’t say anything to him as if it is a ridiculous question. She hopes that is how he will take it.

She thinks he has let it go as just another way to mock the state of her body, knowing what she really is. He gets up and climbs over her legs, and she thinks he is about to gather his clothes and leave. Maybe he thinks so, too, but the moment he picks up his underwear from the rug by her bed, he rolls them up in his hand. He knees back down onto the foot of her bed and drops them there. She swallows hard and looks at him. She draws her legs a little closer together and starts to bend her knees. She wonders how he could possibly want to do it again so soon. She also knows that she cannot say no. Her body does not want her to, either.

“Well, I guess since you were a good girl and didn’t make me wait this time, I could help you out…” he says, magnanimous in a way that she can feel weighing down on her soul. She knows how it is possible for people to hate him when he talks like that, even if she never quite can. He slides his hands beneath her, palms up, and lifts her hips up toward him. In the same movement, he leans down onto his elbows, and she realizes what he is about to do. “I saw you looking…” he taunts. “Maybe someday I’ll let you,” he says, as if it is a great privilege, “but in the meantime at least you can be practice for when I have a somebody worth bringing to my bed.”

He leans in then. The first lick isn’t very confident, and she knows that she is still leaking his semen. She wonders if he remembers that at all. She wriggles her hips as if to get away, but he refuses to let that happen without a word. He gains confidence as he goes. He has been doing this to her for so long that he has gained some confidence, too. This is the first time his mouth has been latched between her legs, but she feels him lick and suckle, and every time she reacts in any way – twitching, moaning, gasping, gripping desperately at her own breasts – she feels the vibration of his laughter.

Her body is not her own, and she has known that for a long time. She loses touch with what she even is beyond her body when this happens. But somehow, this is the worst thing he has ever done to her.

They never kiss. Never. Not once. She has seen boys and girls sneaking kisses on the school grounds. She has seen kisses on television. She knows that it goes with this kind of thing, only for them it doesn’t. She knows that a kiss would be something too close to saying she mattered or was worthy at all. His words bore holes into her brain. Tears come to her eyes while she gets closer and closer to one of the strongest, worst orgasms she has ever felt. His tongue is soft. His lips are soft. He barely even has any stubble. She squirms. He holds her tighter. She hears it. He has never kissed her lips. He has never kissed her neck. Even his mouth on her chest has always been too lewd, too sloppy, too filled with tongue to be called a kiss at all. But this feels like a kiss that could sever what is left of her mind from her body.

She cannot help the sounds she is making or how loud they are. She knows that she is begging, but she cannot hear her own words or if they are words at all. There are tears in her eyes.

Practice.

He always comes to her bed. He never takes her into his.

Practice.

But he will not let her go. He isn’t practice for her. He is all she will ever have, and she wants… this…

This.

Her body finally cracks away from her fraying thread of sanity and she trembles and her insides convulse, and when he drops her down to the bed she cannot move anything but her eyes. When she looks at his face, his mouth and the skin around it glisten as if he has rubbed clear lip-gloss all over his face. It would be funny if she remembered how to laugh. If she remembered how to feel anything.

She lies there and watches him slip his underwear back on. He wipes his mouth roughly with the whole length of his forearm. He pulls his pants on without fastening them. He carries his shirt draped over his arm. He heads off to his room, a place he has told her she will never matter enough to enter.

She lies there, trying to recover her strength from the deep, muscular ache between her legs, running down her thighs and up into her abdomen. Her gaze finds the ceiling as her hands fall down against her belly. She glances at the empty, open frame of the door. He hadn’t even closed it behind him. She thinks she should close it in a bit, but what does it matter?

If he would stay with her, fall asleep, just once, she might think that it is something like the inverse of a photograph. That it is making love even if it is all wrong. She loves him. She knows she does. She knows she longs for him to want her – to care. She blinks again as her eyes burn, but she feels like there probably aren’t anymore tears. It would be easier if she could believe that, if one day the next Matou heir is in her belly and it is all his doing. She thinks that would make him happy, but he could never see her as anything but a worn, filthy rag – never anything else. No, it will never make anything between them. She knows better. He fucks her because he hates her.

Thank you for bearing with that if you did. This is not intended to be a standalone narrative or I would never have written it. I would appreciate any kind of feedback, but I understand if you can't give it for this terrible hot mess. There will be more forthcoming. Basically, I finished reading HF, and I have never been especially happy with Sakura's role in the story, so this is my take on... fixing that... but we have to start somewhere?
]]>FanficsPrix with a Silent Xhttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8197-A-Touch-of-HeavenSecret Santa Contest (2018) Voting and Judginghttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8182-Secret-Santa-Contest-%282018%29-Voting-and-Judging?goto=newpost
Wed, 26 Dec 2018 18:15:01 GMTThe rules remain the same, as usual:

Any member of BL can vote and participate in judging, even if you didn't write anything. If you vote for your own fic (as in, the one you wrote), that vote won't count and will go wasted.

Each voter gets up to three (3) votes, that works by ranking your top 3 fics. Your top fic gets 3 points, your second-place fic gets 2 points, your third-place gets 1 point. Of course, if you don't have a top 3, you don't have to vote for three fics. In the end, all the points are tallied up and whichever fic has the most points is the winner. To vote, post the votes and rankings in this thread.

Voting closes in a little over a week, 1/5. You can also post your reviews in this thread, but it's not required to do so here.

Entries link
]]>FanficsKirbyhttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8182-Secret-Santa-Contest-%282018%29-Voting-and-JudgingSecret Santa Contest (2018) Entrieshttp://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/8179-Secret-Santa-Contest-%282018%29-Entries?goto=newpost
Tue, 25 Dec 2018 18:44:52 GMTThis year's haul. Voting will begin in a day or two. Each fic will have the prompt at the end, in a spoiler tag. Both the prompts and fics will remain anonymous, for now.